


Beware the Unravelling of all Things

by Kimi_Ichisaigosuki



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, I really need to listen to Night Vale when I write more often, M/M, abnormal passage of time, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 19:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki/pseuds/Kimi_Ichisaigosuki
Summary: Sight, gifted by a shattered wand, and losing oneself so that one may be found.





	Beware the Unravelling of all Things

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, funkzpiel. I haven't had a story anywhere near this complexity come to me this quickly in a long time.
> 
> So my best work seems to happen when I’m listening/not listening to Night Vale episodes. This is a gramander pre-slash fic, short, unbeta’d and written in the span of the liveshow “Condos.”

Percy was thirteen the first time he met a Seer. She was exactly like the stories described women like her: old, bent, frail, cataracts over her eyes that should have rendered her blind. There were whispers that as a Seer lost their physical sight, their ability to See became stronger and stronger until they were driven mad.

Percival had just been matched with his second wand, the one that would follow him to adulthood, his first wand having shattered in his hand when he tried to channel a spell too powerful for the ash wood to tolerate. His parents had exchanged glances over his head as he stood there in shock, splinters cast deep into the palm of his hand and the undersides of his fingers. He’d passed out not long after the shattering, and in his mind’s eye he’d seen great swirling vistas of stars and darkness, a broad span of wings that made up galaxies overhead and a whisper that he would do great things. He came to three days later, his hand bandaged and a compress soaked in a potion meant to suppress the opening of the third eye pressed firmly against his forehead. He'd suffered from magical whiplash coupled with all the magical potential the wand had contained when the shards of potential-infused wood buried themselves in his flesh. If his parents hadn’t rushed him to the hospital, he might have been a Seer. His talent would have been far less predictable, being artificially induced, and may have conflicted with his magic so violently that the clashing Potentials within him would have torn his mind asunder.

All of this, he saw when the Seer took his hand.

He blinked the vision away, looked at the hunched crone standing between him and his mother. The Seer gave him a sad, crooked smile that showed her broken and yellowed teeth. “You are lucky. This wand will suit you much better.” Percy yanked his hand free, a cold sweat breaking out across his back. “Beware, Percival Graves. You are strong, stronger than you know. But that strength will be your weakness.” He didn’t know when he started backing away, but he felt it when his back hit the sooty brick of one of the buildings facing the street. “Beware the unravelling of all things, Percival Graves. It will change you forever.”

The Seer stepped away and looked up at the sky with her blind, milky eyes. Percival’s mother hurried over and grasped his hand, the same hand that had been torn by wandwood. His skin prickled uncomfortably, like lightning was crawling over his bones. “Come along, Percy. Leave her be.” He let himself be pulled away, but that encounter never left his mind.

~*~*~*~

_Beware the unravelling of all things._ Percival tried to laugh, but coughed up blood instead. His ribs were definitely broken, he could feel the jagged edge of bone pressing through the wall of his lung. He was lucky his torso hadn’t been perforated, or he’d be fighting a sucking chest wound on top of his other injuries.

He hadn’t seen Grindelwald in days. The sun had crossed the tiny window at the top of the wall in his basement at least three times. Too much longer and he might die of thirst.

Then, footsteps on the stairs. He closed his eyes, already knowing what to expect. He’d begun hallucinating, the visions only becoming stronger in the dark wizard’s presence, seeming to feed off of Grindelwald’s own Seer’s talent. Wings made of galaxies spread themselves across his eyes, trailing veils that would shift and sometimes offer him glimpses of other places. A dry, beautiful, desolate desert. A water-sodden forest half-drowning and half-growing on its own corpse. Strange vistas with animals that he didn’t recognize, skyscapes with constellations he did and did not know the names to.

The door burst open. He tried to lay still.

“Director!”

His eyes snapped open. A woman with short, dark hair knelt in front of him, sweeping her wand over his body and already running diagnostic spells.

Tina Goldstein. His trainee.

He closed his eyes and finally, _finally_ , allowed darkness to swallow him whole.

~*~*~*~

He resigned his position. Or, he tried. Seraphina insisted instead that he take a leave of absence. “It will be years, Sera,” he warned. “Years. I need to heal, and after everything he did to me, that will take a long time.” He didn’t mention the sweeping galaxies, all the possibilities he saw every time he closed his eyes. Everything he saw when he dreamed.

She didn’t care.

And so Percival Graves took the beginning of what he felt would likely be a permanent leave of absence, purchased train tickets with no real idea of where he wanted to go, and stepped onboard and into his future.

~*~*~*~

He stepped out in a small town, surrounded by desert mesa and chaparral. It was…quaint. No, it was strange; there was no dancing around it. If he didn’t know better, he would think it was a wizarding community. Percival looked around, saw strange houses that still managed to look homey, felt his yearly stipend weighing heavily in his pocket, enough money to support him comfortably indefinitely.

This was as good a place as any to settle, he supposed.

Percival Graves stepped down onto the platform, unaware of the train’s sudden disappearance behind him, and took his first step into Night Vale.

~*~*~*~

Years passed, but his reflection didn’t change. He supposed this was what his father had meant when he said that magic could slow aging, if it ran powerfully enough in the blood and bone of the magical person. He’d become bored, some decades past, and joined the Secret Police. His talents, his magic, his Sight, were invaluable, and he became Chief of Police in less than a year, a new record for Night Vale. The man on the radio sang his praises, and he felt himself smile for the first time in what felt like centuries.

~*~*~*~

He’d been Chief of the Secret Police for some fifty years, his reflection ever unchanging and his Sight never failing to warn Night Vale of impending doom, when something happened that he did not forsee. A thunderbird, a creature he recognized from lessons at Ilvermorny, landed in the town square, and memories came flooding back, his Sight lending a terrible clarity.

He’d been alive for far longer than he should have been, even accounting for the extended natural lifespan of witches and wizards. The thunderbird cast a glimmering, golden eye over him, and he locked eyes with the great creature. Without realizing it he was stepping forward, then he was walking, then running, sprinting, leaping onto the back of the thunderbird as it screeched and took to the air, spiraling over Night Vale as Percival’s jeans and flannel melted back into his suit and coat, shielding him from the cold. When the thunderbird finally alighted on a great outcropping of rust-red sandstone, he was shivering and could feel frost on his eyelashes. He lifted his head from where he’d ducked it down against the wind, and saw a tall man with curly red hair staring at him in astonishment.

Percival slid down to the ground, feeling numb. The other man took a hesitant step forward. “Percival Graves?” He nodded, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth with dread. “My name is Newt Scamander. I can’t say I expected to find you here, but I’m glad I did. MACUSA has been trying to find you since you disappeared after taking your leave two years ago.”

The world spun around him. Two years. Centuries of life, of making a home for himself in Night Vale, all crammed into two years. And rather than overwhelming him, it felt…distant. He felt his Sight slipping away, dissipating like smoke in the wind. But more than that, he felt whole. Those horrible fractured edges of his soul cutting into his veins and making him feel like he was bleeding out from the inside were gone, and in their place was the acceptance that came with time. “…I think I’m ready to go back.”

Newt was watching him closely, but despite the misgivings that Percival could read in his eyes, he held out his hand. Percy took the proffered palm and the galaxies faded from the edges of his vision. Newt offered him a shy smile as the wilds of Arizona abruptly snapped into focus, and Night Vale faded from clarity, its purpose well served. “Shall we go home, then?”

Percival took a deep breath, and exhaled the last of his bitter trauma-laced fear. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you thought!


End file.
